How many times have you found yourself at a big holiday dinner, sitting at a large round table, only to find it impossible to get a taste of a certain dish because it is just too far out of reach? You could ask your neighbor to pass the dish but even for them it is too far away. If the dinner party is large enough and for some reason everyone is sitting at the same table it can turn into a sort of assembly line just to pass food around the table. When food touches so many people’s hands before it gets to your mouth it’s never a good sign of things to come.

Large restaurants with large round tables suffer from this problem quite often because they host large parties to make money. However, most of the time they have a wait staff to bring food to each individual person and no one ever has to pass anything around. The family style restaurants like Chinese Dim Sum places and some Italian places that serve their food in communal bowls have dealt with this issue by installing the spinning tablets known as table butlers.

A table butler sits in the center of the round table and can be spun in different directions. When the food is ready it gets placed upon the butler and can be moved to within reach from each individual patron with ease. These butlers are fantastic if you don’t want to reach over anyone’s plate to get at some food and as long as everyone cooperates and doesn’t try to spin the butler in two different directions it is the best possible way to distribute food around a large group.

photo credit: Fábián Gábor fotograf

If your kitchen table suffers from being too large you can use a butler to make things a whole lot easier. You can purchase a large round kitchen table butler at stores like Bed Bath and Beyond or search for one online. You should try and get one large enough to fit your table but not so large that it gets in the way of the plates and utensils. You might even be able to find some round kitchen table sets that have these butlers already equipped.